#2047 – A Winter Weekend in London (Part II: The Long Way Home)

With the departure of my new flight being scheduled at 11:45 AM, I planned to check out at around 8. But before that of course I planned to have the complimentary breakfast that was already included in my reservation. The breakfast was amazing, btw! 🙂

The amazing hotel breakfast

Anyway, it was snowing quite hard when I was checking out. The problem was, it turned out to still be quite early on a Sunday that there was still no overground train running from the station near my hotel. So it appeared that I had no other option than to soldier through the snow and walked to the nearest Piccadilly line Tube station from where I could catch a tube to Heathrow.

Soldiering through snow in London

While at least it was snowing (and not raining) hence “soldiering through it” was still doable, it was still not the most pleasant experience ever! Haha 😆 I arrived at the Tube station like a mess with my coat and body covered in snow, lol 😆 . Long story short, I caught the first metro to Terminal 4 of Heathrow and about 45 minutes later I arrived at the airport.

I checked-in and then cleared the security check via the priority lane thanks to my SkyTeam Elite Plus status 😛 . And then, obviously I went to the awesome SkyTeam Lounge at the airport. I settled myself onto one of the seats and treated myself with some sweets and drinks. I felt like I deserved it after the rough morning I had with the snow, haha 😛 .

The awesome drinks section at the SkyTeam Lounge at Heathrow

Upon checking-in at the lounge, the receptionist asked me if I would like to sign up for the complimentary 15 minutes facial spa treatment by Clarins. Oh wow, this was so awesome and was similar to the same lounge treatment I experienced at the Air France lounge at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York! Obviously I said yes! Haha 😛 The spa treatment was very nice and relaxing; and at the end of it the beautician also gave me a small package of Clarins moisturizer as a gift!

Facial spa treatment at the SkyTeam Lounge at Heathrow

By checking my Flightradar24 app, I knew my flight would be delayed. It was not surprising given the weather. Even at Heathrow it was snowing quite bad at times. And indeed at around 11:30 AM, it was announced that my flight had been delayed to 1:20 PM. And so I just enjoyed my time at the lounge and, in the meantime, had some lunch as well.

It was snowing badly at Heathrow too

However I kept seeing no sign of a KLM bird departing from Schiphol to Heathrow via my app. On the other hand, it was 1:30 PM already and the departure monitor still indicated the 1:20 PM departure. I then asked the reception and at the time she just got the information from KLM that my flight had been cancelled! 😱She informed me to go back to the KLM ticketing counter in front of the check-in area from where the KLM people would be able to assist me.

It was quite a long hassle to go from the airside to the ticketing counter at the landside of Heathrow, btw, as this was a British airport so I would need to clear immigration as well! And when I was there, long lines had been formed in front of the counter, including the SkyPriority lane! There was nothing I could do at this point than to just wait patiently and see.

Long queues of cancelled passengers at Heathrow

While I was waiting, some officers distributed the compensation guideline from KLM. They also informed us that all flights to Amsterdam had been cancelled today and there was high uncertainty on how things would go the next day. They assured us that KLM was working on rebooking us to the next available flights; but this would take some time because the bad weather problem was at Schiphol, KLM’s base; meaning KLM was facing a huge chaos at the moment.

Cancelled flight

While waiting, I started to look for room availability at the hotels nearby Heathrow. Thankfully I still found some with reasonable last-minute price; which assured me a little bit. I was standing in the line, which only barely moving, for more than an hour.

Until up to a point, the ticketing lady asked if any of us were passengers with Amsterdam as our final destination. Probably around 50 people raised their hands, including myself. She informed us that if we were still to fly, it appeared that we would not be able to fly until Tuesday because Monday’s weather forecast was even worse than today’s (Today was a Sunday). As an alternative, KLM had hired a bus to get to Schiphol with very soon departure. While this was certainly not pleasant, at least we would be able to arrive in Amsterdam on Monday early morning. The bus was totally optional and if we did not want it, KLM would still rebook us to the next available flight to Amsterdam.

The approximated route with the bus if we were up for it.

I decided to take the bus because at this point, I still was not given my new flight confirmation. Beside, this would actually mean the fulfillment of a long forgotten bucket list item of mine, that was to travel with all means of public transportation between the Netherlands and London. Bus was the only one missing (the others were: flights, trains, and ferry services); and perhaps this was the “answer” to this item, haha. Upon signing in, KLM also gave us each a £4.50 voucher for us to spend on food and drink for the bus trip.

Long story short, the bus arrived at the bus stop in front of the terminal. I settled onto one of the seats and thankfully the bus was not full and the seat next to me was empty, haha. I was hoping for the bus to have wifi but unfortunately it did not 😛 . After all passengers boarded, we began our land trip to the Netherlands. Yeah, somehow we were all thinking of a comfortable 1 hour flight from London to Amsterdam this morning and we all ended up taking a bus on this route. What an adventure this day had been!

Taking the bus KLM arranged as an alternative to get to Schiphol via land.

During the trip, I got a notification from KLM that I had been rebooked to the first available flight, that would be flight KL1002 with departure time at 08:40 on: Tuesday morning! Haha. Well, I was quite glad that I took this bus option at the time.

Also, the attendee found out that the Channel Tunnel was closed due to the weather. This unfortunately meant we would need to take the slow way to cross the Channel Strate: by the ferry boat. About three hours after departure, we arrived at the Port of Dover where the ferry would depart from. Originally, we planned to take the 19:55 service to Calais in France because (1) it was the earliest scheduled one and (2) it was the shorter ferry route to France from Dover (You know, a ferry boat moves slowly so minimizing the time on the boat would be crucial to minimize the total travel time). However, the ferry would be delayed until 21:30 and so the attendee decided to take the 20:00 to Dunkerque in France. It would be a slightly longer ferry route but this was the fastest possible option that evening. As a side note, it was quite cool though that the security and immigration check were done even without us, the passengers, needing to leave the bus!

Port of Dover in England.

Long story short, we boarded the ferry boat just before 20:00. The total ferrying time would be around two hours so obviously they would not “trap” us inside the bus during the whole time. They let us out to the passengers area in the ferry. With only nine decks, the ferry was much smaller than my “usual” twelve decks Hoek van Holland – Harwich ferry. I went to the restaurant and had a chicken schnitzel (which mushroom sauce tasted weird IMO) as a dinner.

The total journey was two hours. Being a smaller ship, its “sway” was also more promiment than the Hoek van Holland – Harwich ferry I took before. To prevent myself from catching a sea sickness because of this, I decided to walk around the two passengers deck during the entire time, haha. There was one shop, two restaurants, a bar/cafe, an arcade game area, and several lounges on board the ship.

On board the Dover – Dunkerque ferry boat

At around 23:00 local time, we were docking at Dunkerque in France. We went back to our bus and after the door opened, we continued our trip to Schiphol via Belgium. The journey took a little bit longer than expected because the driver needed to be careful with the slippery road due to the snow. I was already super tired at this time and so I slept pretty much all the way to Schiphol!

About 20 minutes before arriving, the attendee woke us up notifying that we almost arrived at the destination. He wished us well and reminded us not to forget anything on the bus because he, the driver, and the bus would immediately return to the UK after dropping us off at Schiphol! :O That was insane indeed! And so we gave him a round of applause for all the trouble of taking us safely to the Netherlands!

It felt so good to finally arrive at Schiphol!

We arrived at Schiphol at around 3 AM on Monday morning. There I also saw a lot of stranded passengers staying overnight at the troubled airport. As there was no convenient public transport option at this ungodly hour, I decided to take a cab to go straight home. This was, btw, my first time ever taking a cab from Schiphol! Haha 😆 .

And finally after about 30 minutes more of taxi trip which cost €60 (which, in the end, KLM was willing to reimburse as a customer service gesture 😍), I arrived at home!